'Tis the Season (for P#ss@d Off Customers) - Slide 8

Have you ever considered how easy it is for employees to say “no” to customer requests? The truth is, saying “yes” usually creates more work for employees and forces them to take risks. And frankly, it seems that some service people don’t feel like they are being paid to say “yes.” It’s too much hard work. But what if employees were incentivized for “yes”? “Yes, I can do that for you over the phone right now.” “Yes, I can add that to your order.” “YES, I can do some hard work for you even though it would be easier for me to just say no.”

Admittedly, it may not be practical to rebuild your entire pay structure around incentiving yeses and penalizing nos, says Kuzmeski. But you can create a “culture of yes” in other ways.

“Why not occasionally ‘catch’ people saying yes to customer requests and reward them on the spot?” she suggests. “You might keep a stack of $10 gift cards on hand to give to yes-sayers, or perhaps send them home an hour early, with pay? It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to reward people for creating happy customers—and your bang for the buck can be impressive, indeed.”

It’s that special season again: the season of crowded stores, whiny kids, irritable customers, and stressed-out employees. If you’re a business owner—in any industry but especially in the retail segment—the holidays are a precarious time. When fuses are short and wallets are shrinking, customers expect great service, says author Maribeth Kuzmeski. Fail to provide it, or fail to instantly implement a recovery plan on those occasions when you do drop the ball, and you may find yourself experiencing a not-so-merry 2011.

“People have higher expectations and a lower tolerance for mistakes,” she adds. “Combine that with distracted employees and larger-than-usual crowds, and it’s the perfect winter storm, so to speak. Without a good service recovery plan, you can easily lose the disgruntled customer, everyone she knows, and possibly a lot of people she doesn’t know if she takes her tale to cyberspace.”

According to Kuzmeski, many companies spend tons of money and time on big customer service initiatives in order to woo new customers—but they end up losing their regular customers over little things. When you consider the 80/20 rule—a maxim stating that most businesses get 80 percent of their revenue from 20 percent of their existing client base—it’s clear that you can’t afford to let that happen.

The solution, says Kuzmeski, is to a) stave off disasters by taking some commonsense preventive measures and b) develop some service recovery techniques and make sure everyone who interacts with your customers knows them. She offers the following advice: